Timeline note: Set in between the "Don't Scare the Teen" and "Hide and Sneak" events, but after my other story Out of Sight.

Rating: T for explicit discussion of a difficult topic.

Grammar note: Thanks to someone from real life for letting me know that "polycephalus" comes from Greek, not Latin, and that "policephali" is indeed the correct plural form. (To clarify, the condition is "polycephaly" and a multi-headed individual is a "policephalus.")

General note: Thanks to Ava-Kane for pointing me to an extensive staff list on the MU website. Notably, though, there was no one for Dancing, so I didn't make up a name.

It had become rare for Mike to go home alone. Usually, Sulley was with him on the way back; they did have the same classes. But today, Sulley had had to stay with Professor Brandywine for discussion of his awful essay on Aesthetics of Energy Meters, and Mike had excused himself in favor of preparing the morning training for the day after tomorrow. The sessions before that one, of course, were already mapped out in painstaking detail.

Kicking away a pebble with a bit more force than was necessary, Mike was not sure if he should be relieved or sad that Sulley was not walking next to him right now. He really could not decide, what with being distracted by all the turmoil in his head. If his friend had been here, maybe this would not have happened, but if he had been, it could have happened anyway, and then he might have picked a fight, or worse yet, he might have been sorry for Mike.

No, he would not have picked a fight. Randy was a ROR. Sulley knew the RORs, and he knew better than to attack one of their number.

Mike decided he was sad about Sulley's absence, after all, when he felt the telltale pricking at his eye. It was not far to his home. He could pull this off. He could get inside before he had to burst into tears out on an open street.

On the last few meters, he did a quick time calculation. Sulley would be at least another half hour, probably longer. Mrs. Squibbles had announced this morning that she would be out shopping for groceries, Don was at the library, the twins at Terri's personal Dance practice, Art in afternoon classes, and Squishy… where was Squishy? Oh, yes, he had promised to help his mother with the groceries. So Mike was alone. Good.

As soon as he had entered the house and forcefully slammed the door shut behind himself, he drew in a deep breath and then let out an almost glass-shattering, shrill scream. More like a shriek, really. He forced himself not to count the seconds, but damn, this felt good.

A moment later, he had calmed down again. Even the oncoming tears had subsided. Perfect. He needed to stay in control.

Taking another deep breath and slowly letting it out again, he went to sit on the sofa, and that was when he heard it. The sound of footsteps. Hurried footsteps from upstairs.

No, not footsteps, he realized when they came crashing down the stairs. The soft brushing of tentacles.

"Mike!" Terry exclaimed in alarm. "Oh, my gosh, I thought that was you, but I wasn't sure!"

"What happened?" Terri added, eye wide in fear. "Did you hurt yourself? Do we need to call an ambulance?"

"I'm fine, guys," he muttered, now actually sitting down. He really had not wanted them to know about this. "What are you even doing here at this time of day?"

For a moment, they seemed flabbergasted by the coherence in his words, and he supposed he could not blame them. Not after he had lost himself like that.

Then Terri waved at him impatiently. "My Professor hurt his leg yesterday, he had to reschedule my practice, but that's not important right now!"

"What happened?" Terry asked yet again, but he had narrowed his eye. He seemed to have realized that there was no injury involved.

"I'm fine," Mike insisted, trying not to look at them. "Really. I didn't hurt myself." Why would he have? Randy had hurt him enough for one day. "Don't you worry."

Scowling, Terry crossed his arms with his brother's. "If it's not an injury, then what happened?" he pressed.

"It's not important," Mike muttered, fixing some spot on the floor. Not to them. It was only important to him. He really doubted it was important to Randy.

In his peripheral line of vision, he could see them exchange a glance, but he did not get the gist of it. Was it confused? Stubborn? Annoyed? Could they not just leave him alone?

"Well, you're in pain," Terri then pointed out timidly. "So of course it's important."

Mike rolled his eye. "Why would you care?" The incident had not involved them. Why weigh themselves down with his baggage?

Curiously, the temperature in the room immediately seemed to drop a few degrees. He had never seen them angry before, and he was a little surprised to find that it made them scarier than in all the practice sessions they had had by now. "Are you implying we don't care about our friends?" Terry hissed, his glare matching his brother's.

Mike blinked at them. He really did not get that reaction. This was not about them at all. "No one ever cares!" he spelled it out, as if it was not obvious. He half got up from the sofa while he said it. Surely, the conversation had to be over now.

He had expected them to back off. He had expected them to realize what a pair of idiots they were making of themselves. But instead, they froze, both staring at him with wide eyes. Glassy eyes. For some reason, what he had said had brought them to the verge of tears.

"No one cares when you're upset?" Terri whispered.

Mike just stared at them. "Why would anyone care?" It was not as if people were capable of thinking outside of their own selfish heads. The ones who engaged in considering what others felt were only fools like him.

Terry briefly rubbed his eye, then propelled both himself and his brother forward so that he could touch Mike's arm, push him to sit down again. "Well, we care. So c'mon, tell us what's wrong, okay?"

By now, he had sort of run out of arguments. He was not sure how to deal with them not understanding such a basic fact of the universe. They had always struck him as so smart, but here they were, being empathic fools themselves.

He was not even sure what to say. It was not as if he could tell them the truth. They would just use it against him somehow. That was always what happened when he opened up.

"And don't tell us it's no big deal," Terry added when he kept silent. "Because if it wasn't, you wouldn't have been screaming like that. I was terrified for a moment."

That brought a small smile to Mike's face. He had scared them, huh? Of course it was not nice doing it to his friends, but the confirmation of his talent cheered him up a bit.

Apparently, his expression did not go unnoticed. "See? It helps sharing stuff with someone, right?" Terri said, lightly stroking his arm. Mike did a double take, but he had not been mistaken. Terri was stroking his arm, as if he was a little, frightened child.

Huh. What an oddly comforting gesture.

Still, he was not going to just hand them ammunition. "Look, guys, I have work to do. I need to prepare our training, or we'll fall behind, and if we do, we might lose the next challenge, and then people are gonna make fun of us, and…"

To his own surprise, he suddenly choked up at the words. He was incapable of finishing the sentence. Finishing it would mean further elaboration on that last thought. And now, for some reason, he felt his eye water again, but he blinked profusely. He was not going to cry in front of them. In front of anyone.

"It wasn't anything big, anyway," he heard himself tell them despite Terry's warning, his voice taking on a higher pitch on each word. "So it's no big… I mean… I just… I… saw R-Randy today, and… it just…"

And before he knew what was happening, the story had forced its way out, and some detached part of himself registered the oddity of it all. The trembling in his voice. The shaking of his hands. The horror on their faces.

And he told them about the entire scene, about how he had found Randy talking to some students not in any fraternity or sorority, and he had been bad-mouthing the Oozmas in general and Mike in particular, laughing at the notion of Mike ever becoming a Scarer. It had been such a blow, especially after that episode with the stuffed animals, to hear Randy abusing their familiarity with each other in order to sharpen his insults. And then when Randy had spotted him eavesdropping, the entire group had started laughing, pointing, shouting little jabs his way…

On and on he went, and the twins kept silent during it all, were just looking at him with those horrified expressions.

He should not be telling them this. He really, really should not be telling them this. But he just could not stop the flood of words bubbling out of him. It had been so long since someone had listened. His mother had, when he had been little, but they had both grown out of that at some point. For some reason, he felt she had been overwhelmed when he had come home every day telling her how the other kids had ignored him, or insulted him, or laughed at him. His sister had sometimes bothered to listen, only to tell him afterward that it was he who needed to change. And his father, well, his father had never been the listening type to begin with.

If nothing else, the twins seemed attentive. No, more than that. Spooked. They did not know this side of him. Heck, he did not know this side of himself. He was losing control, and he hated losing control.

How could they ever take him seriously again as a leader?

"…so I, well, I ran, I really didn't know how to deal with… I mean…" Now he was not even capable of finishing his sentences any longer. He had completely and utterly lost control of himself.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, fixing the ground again. "I'm so sorry, guys, I… I have no right to burden you with…"

"Shut up," Terry interrupted bluntly, and Mike fell silent. Funny. He had not consciously realized how close he had become to the twins, to all of the Oozmas, but something made him sure he had lost these two for good, right now.

"I can't believe you're apologizing when he's the one at fault!" Terry went on, his voice vibrating with anger.

Now Mike looked up at them, taking in their expressions. They were shaking with rage. Terri seemed so furious that he could not even speak. But there was something else which was not quite discernible. For one short, irritating moment, he got the impression that they were pleased with him being humiliated.

But, no, not that. With him telling them about it.

"I mean, you were close, weren't you?" Terri finally picked up where his brother had left off. "This is like… like… Art making fun of us! You know, something that you're sure is never going to happen!"

"He wouldn't do that kind of thing!" Terry cut in, throwing his brother a brief look before turning back to Mike. "And that goes for all of us, I might add. You're not gonna have that problem with us."

Mike wanted so badly to believe them. But he had said that about Randy. How was he supposed to believe them after having to learn through extensive, painful experience that no friendship in this world was forever?

"Maybe he's right," he mumbled, and part of him was just as shocked about the words as the twins obviously were. And yet, he could not stop expressing that thought. "Maybe it's pointless. I mean, it wasn't just him, they all seemed to agree, and…"

"Well, it's true that you don't exactly have a traditional 'Scarer build,'" Terry cut in, "but neither does Squishy, and that doesn't mean you can't be scary anyway, right? I mean, we should know. What do you think happened when Terri and I walked into that Dance class the first time?"

Mike got the feeling that he was supposed to know the answer to that question. "I have no idea. What happened?"

They both stared at him as if he had just grown a nose. "Well, we're a polycephalus," Terri then pointed out stupidly.

A multi-headed monster. Mike knew the term, but it was not as if he had not realized that, what with them being conjoined and all. "And?"

"Polycephali are notorious for tripping," Terry stated, blinking at him.

"What?" That was the first time Mike had heard of anything like this, and he felt himself consciously distracted, if that made sense, in favor of focusing on this weird snippet of information. "Why?"

Truth be told, he was a bit annoyed at them when they kept staring for a moment, but even he realized that "annoyed" was a great deal better than… whatever he had been a few minutes before. "Look," he added, "if this is a general polycephali thing, I'll have you know that you two are the first one I know personally."

"Ah." Terry seemed to suppress a smile. "That explains it. I'd been wondering."

Mike rolled his eye. "About what?"

"Why you're not the least bit prejudiced against us," Terri explained.

Terry smirked. "Well, to answer your question, it's basically the same set of tentacles… or feet, or claws, or whatever one walks with… the same set of lower appendages controlled by more than one mind."

"Sometimes, it's the arms, too," Terri added. "But fortunately, that's not the case for us."

At that, Terry turned his head to scowl at his other half. "What do you mean, 'fortunately?'"

Terri briefly stuck out his tongue. "I like my arms! At least I can slap you with them when I feel like it!"

Terry groaned in a rather transparent attempt to mask his amusement, then turned back to face Mike again. "The thing is that polycephali can't really walk in the first… four-or-so years of their lives because the different minds need to learn to sync themselves first. So of course, when Terri signed up for Dancing, everyone was convinced that we'd set ourselves up to fail."

Mike was a bit surprised at the sudden flash of sympathy flaring up inside of him. "I can imagine how that must feel."

Terry snorted. "I'm pretty sure there's no imagination involved."

Terri snickered at that, and Mike had to admit that it had been a dumb thing to say. No, there was no need to imagine anything. He knew the real thing.

"And did you?" he asked. "Fail, I mean. It sure doesn't sound that way when you talk about classes." The truth was, he found their, for lack of a better word, "condition" incredibly intriguing, but he supposed they would not appreciate him treating them like a science project.

"Nope!" Terri quipped cheerfully. "Despite everything Terry says about my dancing!"

Terry rolled his eye. "Well, I have to dance along, so of course the result is gonna be good."

Terri smacked him, but it was obviously in good humor.

"Why is the synchronization thing so hard?" Mike pressed, because he really could not stop himself. "I mean, it should be natural to you, right? You were born like this!"

With the way they had been trying to lift his spirits, he was a bit baffled when they both suddenly fell silent.

"Well…" Terri started.

Rolling his eye, Terry sighed. "Terri, it's not as if he can't look it up."

"If this topic is uncomfortable for you…" Mike started, a bit alarmed at their reaction, but they both waved him off almost simultaneously.

"Some polycephali never learn," Terry stated bluntly. "Which is where all the prejudice comes from, I suppose."

Mike felt a bit of a cold chill at the prospect of living in the same body as someone else and not even managing to agree on which direction to walk in. "And what happens if they don't?" For some reason, he dreaded the answer.

Terri opened his mouth to reply, but then hesitated and just looked up at his brother, to visibly, if silently, plead with him to take on that responsibility.

Terry smiled at him a bit, then looked back at Mike. "Most of us end up killing each other," he said softly.

Mike gasped. He had expected something bad, but not on that level of horror. Suddenly, he saw a vivid mental image of the twins both clawing at each other's necks, and the vision was so gruesome that he had to clutch the arm rest for support.

"Why do you think there are so few of us?" Terry added, and he did not seem the least bit surprised about Mike's reaction.

"But… you…" Mike stammered. "You're not gonna… are you?" They were important to him, he realized. They were dearly important to him. If something like that was bound to happen to them in the future, then…

„Nah," Terry chuckled and lightly rapped the top of his twin's head with his upper hand. „Guy's a menace, but he is my brother."

Terri rubbed his head in annoyance, but still grinned up at his other half. "And there's worse people to spend your life with than this idiot," he added.

Mike breathed a huge sigh. The words did calm him down. What had he even been worried about? Had he not seen enough of their interactions to know that they loved each other? They were family! And after all, they had just told him that they had gotten a hang of the synchronization stuff, right?

"If it's so difficult, then how did you do it?" he asked, partly to distract himself from the fact that he had overreacted.

"It's a question of character," Terry stated. "You need to learn to get along with someone you didn't choose, truly get along, not just tolerate them. And many people aren't capable of doing that."

Mike smiled at them a little. "Yeah, I don't suppose I'd be."

Terry blinked at him. "Oh, but you did."

"…huh?" was Mike's not exactly eloquent reply.

"With Sulley," Terri added. "We didn't really get that at first, but you weren't too thrilled about him being on the team, were you?"

"Well…" Mike started, but did not quite know how to explain without bad-mouthing someone who, he had realized lately, was not actually such a bad fellow. "Er, you remember when we met, when I told you about the guy involved in the situation with Hardscrabble's scare canister?"

Terry smirked. "Yeah, thought that was him. Point is, you're getting along. So you're not as simple-minded as a lot of others I could name. Like that Randy guy."

Ah. Mike realized he had probably been a bit dense about it, but now he saw what they had been getting at. Well, what Terry had been getting at. He seemed the one more adept at spontaneously coming up with overall structures to organize his words in.

Still, for some reason, Mike found himself fidgeting. It sounded unfair toward Randy to put it like that. He knew, of course, that he should really stop defending the guy, but he just could not help it. "Well, if we want to be honest here, it's not like I really put much effort into the friendship…"

Terri blinked. "Huh? But you were hanging out every time we saw you, how's that not putting effort into it?"

Mike sighed. "Well, there were several instances when he asked me to do… I don't know, 'fun stuff,' and I stayed behind to study. Things like that. He must have thought I didn't want to be friends or something."

"Are you serious?" Terry frowned at him. "I mean, I'm gonna venture a guess here, and it's kind of a personal question, so you don't have to answer. Judging by how 'no one ever cares,' I'm guessing you haven't had many friends in your life, have you?"

"How's that relevant?" Mike shot back a little too quickly, but this time, for some reason, he immediately sensed that Terry meant him no harm, so it did not take him long to calm down. "But… yeah," he admitted.

Terry rolled his eye. "So how could the guy expect you to know how to hang out with friends when you've never done that before?"

Mike blinked at the unexpected question. Wait, that was a good point. "I, well… what?"

Terry smiled at him. „Well, you couldn't have known what 'one does' because you've never experienced it. And it was pretty dumb of him not to realize that. Or, you know, he could have asked your opinion on things before expecting you to do them."

Could he? "Well, he also learned with me…"

Terry rolled his eye. "Yeah, and that was not at all beneficial to himself."

"What Terry is saying," Terri cut in, "is that you really shouldn't be worrying about that Randy guy. Don't let his bullying get you down!" And with that, there appeared such a brilliant smile on his face that Mike was half-tempted to close his eye against the sudden brightness. "You're awesome, and you're way more awesome than he is!"

Mike felt his features melting into a smile. That had not been the smoothest transition ever made, even though the thought behind the sentence seemed heartfelt. But for some reason, he felt… warm? Or as if someone had just opened a window to a room full of stale air? He was not sure what the sensation was, but all of a sudden, he felt infinitely better.

"Thanks, guys," he muttered. "And I'm…"

"If you say 'sorry' now," Terry cut in yet again, steel in his voice, "Terri is gonna reevaluate his opinion about you."

"Hey!" the younger twin exclaimed. "It's not for you to decide that!"

"You shouldn't have had to put up with this," Mike insisted, but Terri shook his head.

"Everyone needs someone to listen!" he pointed out. "And if you don't have anyone…"

Terry waved a hand at him to get him to shut up. "Even if you had someone," he corrected, addressing Mike, "we'd still be willing to listen. So, you need us, you just give a shout, okay?" He paused. "Though maybe not one like when you entered the house; that was creepy."

Mike chuckled at them, but before he could reply, he heard the sound of someone unlocking the front door, and sure enough, they only had to wait for a moment before Sulley entered the house.

"I'm ba-… hey guys," he greeted when he spotted them in mid-word. "Sorry I'm late, Brandywine kinda put me to sleep, and then I crossed paths with Boggs on the Troll Bridge, and I actually got away with pushing him into the water and then claiming it was an accident. And then, of course, I had to stay a bit and watch him sputter."

Mike was not entirely sure whether to giggle at the words or feel sorry for what had happened to Randy, comeuppance be damned.

When the only response to the little story was silence, Sulley frowned. "You know, I expected at least one of you to reprimand me for this."

Terri grinned at him. "Well, your timing is…"

"…totally flawless," Terry cut in before the younger twin could finish the sentence, "because Mike was just gonna show us the new Stealth technique that we're gonna tackle in the next session."

Terri seemed a bit alarmed at what he had almost given away, but also obviously relieved that his brother had not let him. As it was, Sulley seemed to sense that he was being excluded from something. His gaze flickered between them all for a bit before settling on Mike. "Well, I appreciate your efforts, but can't we just go over that when we actually learn it?"

"Can't be worse than Brandywine," Terry pointed out.

Mike almost squirmed under Sulley's gaze. There was no way he was going to have another one of these conversations. He had already confided in two of his charges; no need to drag a third one into this. There was no guarantee that it would go just as well this time.

But talking to the twins had gone well, he really had to admit that. Maybe he should have trusted them from the very beginning, but… this was just so weird. People who listened. People who did not judge him for what he had said. People who considered his feelings afterward. Actually, the very fact that the two existed and were there for him felt so much better than the entire conversation.

And it was not just them. Sulley would have listened as well, of that he was sure. So would Don, especially since he was older than the rest of them and, thus, knew more about life in general. For Art, offering it had been almost the first thing he had done when they had first met, and Squishy… well, Squishy would certainly have listened, but Mike would probably have chosen not to tell him stuff like that for fear of upsetting him too much. Even so, just as the rest of them, Squishy cared. Mike had a bunch of people around him who were actually interested in his welfare and happiness.

Sure, it did not solve his problem with Randy - and by this point, he was not even sure if there was hope of ever solving that problem. But at least he had alternatives to sitting around and moping about it.

"Er, Mike?"

His head snapped up immediately, and he met Sulley's gaze only to learn that there was concern etched into his friend's features. "Sorry, Sul, you were saying?"

Sulley raised both his brows in amazement. "I asked you why you want to have a strategy meeting right now even though we'll go over it again when we practice. We're not even all here!"

"Oh, that's true," Mike said lightly, and tried not to look at the twins because they were smirking at his acting talent. "Well, then I suppose it really makes no sense to do this right now, does it?"

"Are you okay?" Sulley probed. "You seem a little off."

"I'm fine," Mike claimed, and then realized that it was true. He really was okay.

"If you say so," Sulley muttered, then brightened up. "Mike, can I borrow your essay on User Manual Typography? I just can't seem to finish the damn thing!"

With a small smile, Mike finally got up from the sofa so that he could lead the way to the stairs. "It's not that hard, Sul," he teased. "You'd have been finished days ago if you'd just bothered to actually read the book!"

He was a little unnerved about the smiles on the twins' faces, but decided just not to think about them too much. And then he changed his mind.

"Just a minute," he muttered to Sulley before navigating around his bulky friend and then skipping back to the twins, so that he could snake his arms between their upper and lower ones for a tight embrace and feel them return the gesture. For one short moment, all he did was to enjoy the contact.

He felt like it. And right now, he did not care if anyone judged him for it.